The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales An Empirical Analysis*

Felix Oberholzer-Gee Harvard University Koleman Strumpf University of Kansas

* We would like to thank Bharat Anand, Gary Becker, Bob Frank, Shane Greenstein, Austan Goolsbee, Alan Krueger, Steven Levitt, Tom Mroz, Alan Sorensen, Joel Waldfogel, Steven Wildman, Pai-Ling Yin, participants at numerous seminars, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments. This project would not have been possible without the assistance of several individuals and organizations. MixMasterFlame and the FlameNap network shared P2P data with us, and BigChampagne LLC, the CMJ Network, Nathaniel Leibowitz, and Nevil Brownlee generously provided auxiliary data. We thank Keith Ross and David Weekly for assistance in understanding the KaZaA, OpenNap, and WinMX search protocols and database indices. Sarah Woolverton and Christina Hsiung Chen provided superb research assistance. The financial support of the George F. Baker Foundation (Oberholzer-Gee) and the Kenan Faculty Fund (Strumpf) is gratefully acknowledged. We appreciated the aural support from Massive Attack, Sigur Ros and The Mountain Goats.

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Abstract For industries ranging from software to pharmaceuticals and entertainment, there is an intense debate about the appropriate level of protection for intellectual property. The Internet provides a natural crucible to assess the implications of reduced protection because it drastically lowers the cost of copying information. In this paper, we analyze whether file sharing has reduced the legal sales of music. While this question is receiving considerable attention in academia, industry and in Congress, we are the first to study the phenomenon employing data on actual downloads of music files. We match an extensive sample of downloads to U.S. sales data for a large number of albums. To establish causality, we instrument for downloads using data on international school holidays. Downloads have an effect on sales which is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Our estimates are inconsistent with claims that file sharing is the primary reason for the decline in music sales during our study period.

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I. Introduction

File sharing is now one of the most common online activities. U.S. households swap more than

300 million files each month, a figure that has grown by over 50% in the last two years

(Karagiannis, Broido, Brownlee, claffy and Faloutsos 2004; Billboard 2006). Sharing files is

largely non-rivalrous because the original owner retains his copy of a downloaded file. The low

cost of sharing and significant network externalities are key reasons for the dramatic growth in

file-sharing. While few participated prior to 1999, the founding year of Napster, in 2006 there

were about ten million simultaneous users on the major peer-to-peer (P2P) networks

(BigChampagne 2006). Because physical distance is largely irrelevant in file sharing,

individuals from virtually every country in the world participate.

There is great interest in understanding the economic effects of file sharing, in part because the

music industry was quick to blame the phenomenon for the recent decline in sales. Between

2000 and 2005, the number of CDs shipped in the United States fell by 25% to 705 million units

(RIAA 2006). Claiming that file sharing was the culprit, the recording industry started suing

thousands of individuals who share files. The industry also asked the Supreme Court to rule on

the legality of file-sharing services, a question which critically hinges on the “market harm”

caused by the new technology. Congress is currently considering a number of measures

designed to counter the perceived threat of file sharing.

While concerns about P2P are widespread, the theoretical effect of file sharing on record sales

and industry profits is ambiguous (Bakos, Brynjolfsson and Lichtman 1999; Takeyama 1997;

Varian 2000). Participants could substitute downloads for legal purchases, thus reducing sales.

The inferior sound quality of downloads and the lack of features such as liner notes or cover art

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perhaps limit such substitution. Alternatively, file sharing allows users to learn about music they

would not otherwise be exposed to. In the file sharing community, it is common practice to

browse the files of others and discuss music in file server chat rooms. This learning may

promote new sales. Other mechanisms proposed in the theoretical literature have unclear effects

on sales. Individuals can use file sharing to sample music, which will increase or decrease sales

depending on whether users like what they hear (Shapiro and Varian 1999). The availability of

file sharing could also change the willingness to pay for music – it could either decrease it due to

the ever present option of downloading, or it could increase it through network effects and the

greater ease of sharing (Takeyama 1994). Finally, it is possible there is little effect on sales. File

sharing lowers the price of music, which draws in low-valuation individuals who would

otherwise not have purchased albums. Rob and Waldfogel (2006) find in a recent survey that

college students value albums they purchased in the store at $15.91. In contrast, respondents’

willingness to pay for albums they downloaded was only $10.66, a value below the average

purchase price of a CD.

With no clear theoretical prediction, the effect of file sharing on sales is an empirical question.1

Most of what we know about the effects of file sharing is based on surveys. The evidence is

mixed. File sharers generally acknowledge both sales displacement and learning effects, and it is

unclear if either effect dominates. Rather than relying on surveys, this study is the first to use

observations of actual file-sharing behavior of a large population to assess the impact of

downloads on sales. Our dataset includes 0.01% of the world’s downloads (1.75 million file

1The entertainment industry’s opposition to file sharing is not a priori evidence that file sharing imposes economic damages. The industry has often blocked new technologies which later become sources of profit. For example, Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti argued that “the VCR is to the American film producer as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone” (Congressional Hearings on Home Recording, 12 April 1982). By 2004, 72% of domestic industry revenues came from VHS and DVD rentals or sales (DEG 2005; MPAA 2005). Other examples include the record industry’s initial opposition to radio in the 1920s and 1930s and to home taping in the 1980s.

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transfers) from the last third of 2002, a period of rapid growth in file sharing. We match audio

downloads of users in the United States to a representative set of commercially relevant albums

for which we have concurrent weekly sales, resulting in a database of over ten thousand album-

weeks. This allows us to directly study the relationship between downloads and sales. To

establish causality, we instrument for downloads using international school holidays, a supply

shock that is plausibly exogenous to sales. Our instruments are relevant since they have a large

impact on file transfer time, which in turn is a key determinant of the number of downloads.

We find that file sharing has only had a limited effect on record sales. After instrumenting for

downloads, the estimated effect of file sharing on sales is not statistically distinguishable from

zero. The economic effect of the point estimates is also small. When considering the policy

implications of these results, it is important to take into account the precision of our estimates.

Based on all specifications presented in this paper, even our least precise results, we can reject

the hypothesis that file sharing cost the industry more than 24.1 million albums annually (3% of

sales and less than one third of the observed decline in 2002). Models that consider the

dynamics of file sharing allow us to make more precise statements. For example, if we account

for the growth in file sharing during our study period we can reject a null that P2P displaced

more than 6.6 million in CD sales or less than 10% of the 2002 decline. We arrive at similar

conclusions if we allow the effect of international school holidays to vary by album. Our results

continue to hold after permitting downloads to influence sales with a lag, omitting data from the

holiday shopping season, and restricting our sample to popular titles. In total the estimates

indicate that the sales decline over 2000-2002 was not primarily due to file sharing. While

downloads occur on a vast scale, most users are likely individuals who in the absence of file

sharing would not have bought the music they downloaded.

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Our conclusion is supported by other data and methods of analysis. For instance, in the most

recent Consumer Expenditure Survey (2004) for the U.S., households without a computer, who

seem unlikely to engage in file sharing, report that they reduced their spending on CDs by 43%

since 1999. Quasi-experimental evidence on the long-term effect of P2P on music sales also lead

to similar results. For example, we document that the share of sales during the summer months

when fewer students have access to high-speed campus Internet connections did not change as a

result of P2P. Similarly, sales did not decline more precipitously in the Eastern Time Zone of

the United States where P2P users can more conveniently download files provided Europeans.

Using several years of data, we also show that the number of P2P users is not correlated with

album sales. Finally we document that the recording industry often experiences sales reductions,

including a recent episode with a sharper reduction than the current period. These experiments

are an important complement to our micro-data results. While the main estimates focus on high-

frequency variation over several months, the experiments focus on long-term trends using data

spanning several years.

Our results have broader implications beyond the specific case of file sharing. A longstanding

question in economics concerns the level of protection for intellectual property that is necessary

to ensure innovation (Posner 2005). Economic research on the role of patents and copyrights

likely began with the critique in Plant (1934) and continues today in the debate between Boldrin

and Levine (2002) and Klein, Lerner and Murphy (2002). We provide specific evidence on the

impact of weaker property rights for the case of a single industry, recorded music. The file-

sharing technology available in 2002 had markedly lowered the protection that copyrighted

music recordings enjoyed, so it is interesting to analyze to what extent this reduced protection

adversely affected sales. For our study period, we do not detect a significant impact. The paper

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also contributes to a growing literature which studies the interactions between the Internet and

brick and mortar economies (Goolsbee 2000; Gentzkow forthcoming).

The outline of the paper is as follows. The next section provides an overview of the empirical

literature. Section III describes the mechanics of file sharing, and we discuss our data in Section

IV. Next we describe the econometric approach. Section VI presents the results, and the last

section discusses the implications of this study.

II. The Literature

Empirical research on file sharing and record sales has been limited and inconclusive, primarily,

we believe, due to shortcomings with the data. Most of what we know about the effect of file

sharing on sales is based on surveys. There are numerous industry studies which arrive at a

diverse range of conclusions. For instance, Forrester Research (2002) and Jupiter Media Metrix

(2002) find neutral or positive effects, while the International Federation of the Phonographic

Industry (2002), Edison Media Research (2003) and Forrester Research (2004) document a sales

displacement. A general difficulty with these studies is that they compare the purchases of

individuals who download files with the purchases of those who do not. While downloaders may

in fact buy fewer records, this could simply reflect a selection effect. File sharing is attractive to

those who are time-rich but cash-poor, and these individuals would purchase fewer CDs even in

the absence of P2P networks.

A handful of academic studies rely on micro data to address the issue of unobserved

heterogeneity among file sharers.2 Rob and Waldfogel (2006) study the survey responses of a

convenience sample of U.S. college students. For hit albums which sold more than 2 million

2 The Journal of Law and Economics published additional papers in a symposium on file sharing in 2006. Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005) discusses these studies and additional work.

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copies since 1999, they find no relationship between downloading and sales. Expanding the set

of albums to include all music the students acquired in 2003, downloading five albums displaces

the sale of one CD. These results could mean that piracy does not affect hit albums but hurts

smaller artists, or it is also possible that file sharing had less of an effect on sales in earlier years.

After instrumenting for downloads with the school the students attend – everyone at Penn has

broadband access while this is not true for the other schools – the resulting estimates are too

imprecise to draw any firm conclusions. Zentner (2006) employs European survey data to study

the relation between file sharing and sales. Using measures of Internet sophistication and access

to broadband as instruments, Zentner finds some displacement. Unfortunately, neither the Rob

and Waldfogel study nor Zentner’s work allow inferences about the total impact of file sharing

on record sales because neither paper studies a representative sample of file sharers. Zentner

also lacks information about the number of downloads and CD purchases.

Our approach differs from the current literature in that we directly observe file sharing. Our

results are based on a large and representative sample of downloads, and individuals are

generally unaware that their actions are being recorded.

III. File sharing Networks

File sharing relies on computers forming networks which allow the transfer of data. Each

computer may agree to share some files and has the ability to search for and download files from

other computers in the network. Our data come from the OpenNap network, an open-source

descendant of Napster. OpenNap is an example of a centralized P2P network in which users log

on to a central server that tracks all search requests and file downloads. During our study period

in the fall of 2002, P2P networks were already quite large. FastTrack (which includes the

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popular KaZaA service (see Liang, Kumar and Ross 2004) had grown to 3.5 million

simultaneous users by December 2002. The second largest network was WinMX, which had

about 1.5 million simultaneous users in 2002. Even the smaller networks were fairly large.

OpenNap, the choice of about one percent of all P2P users, had at least 25,000 simultaneous

users sharing over 10 million files. Napster no longer operated in the fall of 2002.

IV. Data

We use two main data sources for this study. Logs for two OpenNap servers allow us to observe

what files users download. Weekly album-level sales data come from Nielsen SoundScan

(2005). SoundScan tracks music purchases at over 14,000 retail, mass merchant and online

stores in the United States. Nielsen SoundScan data are the source for the well-known Billboard

music charts. To develop our instruments, we rely on a large number of additional data sources

which we discuss in the next section.

File Sharing Data

Our data were collected from two OpenNap servers, which operated continuously for seventeen

weeks from 8 September to 31 December 2002. The information on file transfers is collected as

part of the log files which the servers generate, and most users are unaware their actions are

being observed and recorded. An excerpt of a typical log file is:

[2:53:35 PM]: User evnormski "(XNap 2.2-pre3, 80.225.XX.XX)" logged in [2:55:31 PM]: Search: evnormski "(XNap 2.2-pre3)": FILENAME CONTAINS "kid rock devil"

MAX_RESULTS 200 BITRATE "EQUAL TO" "192" SIZE "EQUAL TO" "4600602" "(3 results)" [3:02:15 PM]: Transfer: "C:\Program Files\KaZaA\My Shared Folder\Kid Rock –Devil

Without A Cause.mp3" (evnormski from bobo-joe)

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The last two lines in the log file show user “evnormski” downloading the song “Devil Without a

Cause” by Kid Rock from user “bobo-joe”. Information on downloads are the building blocks of

our analysis. We focus on downloads because these are the files users actually obtain and they

can potentially displace sales. Over the sample period we observe 1.75 million file downloads,

or about 0.01% of all downloads in the world. We restrict the analysis to audio files by users in

the U.S. The server logs include the I.P. address for each client which we use to identify our

users’ home country.

An important question is whether our sample is representative of data on all P2P networks.3

While we are unaware of any database spanning the universe of music downloads, we were able

to compare the data from our servers with a sample of more than 25,000 downloads from

FastTrack/KaZaA, the leading network at the time. We find that the availability of titles is

highly correlated on the two networks. Using a standard homogeneity test based on 1,789

unique songs, we cannot reject a null that the two download samples are drawn from the same

population (Pearson χ2 statistic is 1824.1). The resemblance of files is not surprising.

Individuals in our data are similar to those on the most popular networks because the user

experience is quite similar and many individuals employ software which allows them to

simultaneously participate on several networks. For example, roughly one third of OpenNap

participants uses the WinMX software, which allows them to simultaneously access the two

largest networks during our study period. We also find that users on these larger networks and

those on our servers have access to a comparable number of files and that network size has little

effect on the distribution of downloads. Based on these tests, we conclude that our sample is

representative of the file transfers on the major P2P networks during our study period.

3 A more comprehensive discussion of this point is in Appendix A of Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005).

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Sales Data and Album Sample

In this study, we focus on a sample of albums sold in U.S. stores in the second half of 2002. The

sample is representative of all commercially relevant albums, allowing us to draw meaningful

inferences about P2P’s impact on overall music sales.4 The sample is drawn from a population

of albums on 11 charts produced by Nielsen SoundScan (2005): Alternative Albums (a chart

with 50 positions), Hard Music Top Overall (100), Jazz Current (100), Latin Overall (50), R&B

Current Albums (200), Rap Current Albums (100), Top Country Albums (75), Top Soundtracks

(100), Top Current (200), New Artists (150), and Catalogue Albums (200). The charts are

published on a weekly basis, and we include an album in the population if it appears on any chart

in any week during the second half of 2002. The original population is extensive (2,282 albums)

and includes many poorer-selling albums. For instance, our data include two albums which sold

fewer than 100 copies during our study period, and the 25th percentile of sales in our data is only

12,493 copies.5 While we study the commercially most relevant music, it would be incorrect to

think of our population as a set of superstar albums. From this population, we draw a genre-

based, stratified random sample of 680 releases. To reflect the popularity of different music

styles, we set the sample share of a genre equal to its fraction of CD sales in 2002.6 Within each

genre, we randomly select individual titles.

The average album in the resulting sample sold 143,096 copies during our study period. Table 1

reports sales statistics for the full sample and for individual categories. Across all categories, 4The genre charts we sample from made up 81.8% of all CD sales in the United States in the last third of 2002. This is virtually identical to the 2002 share of 83.6% for the Big Five record companies, and 97% of the albums on the annual version of these charts were released on RIAA-associated labels. 5A typical measure of album success is gold certification which occurs at sales of half a million copies. 6Albums can appear on more than one chart because some charts (e.g., New Artists, Top Current) comprise many musical styles. For sampling purposes, we grouped all albums by style; a Rap album on the Top Current list is grouped with all other Rap albums during the sampling process. In the descriptive statistics, we classify albums by their original charts.

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44% of population sales are represented in the sample. A two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test

comparing the distribution of sales on the original charts and in our sample is unable to reject the

null that sample sales are representative of the population of all albums (p=0.991). We also

reject this null comparing each of our 11 original charts with the sample sales for that particular

chart (p>0.539 for all 11 charts.)

In order to compare sales and downloads, we match the 260,889 songs which U.S. users

successfully transferred during our study period to the 10,271 songs on the 680 albums in our

sample. The matching procedure is hierarchical in that we first parse each transfer line,

identifying text strings that could be artist names. These text strings are then compared to the

artist names in our set of albums. The list of artists contains the name on the cover and up to two

other performing artists or producers that are associated with a particular song. For example, the

song “Dog” on the B2K album “Pandemonium” is performed by Jhene featuring the rapping of

Lil Fizz. For “Dog,” B2K, Jhene and Lil Fizz are recognized as artists. Once an artist is

identified, the program then matches strings of text to the set of songs associated with that

particular artist. Using this algorithm, we match 47,709 downloads in the server log files to our

list of songs, a matching rate of about 18%.

There are two reasons why this rate is less than 100%. First, a download may be for a song that

is not in our sample. These transfers are not of any concern, they simply reflect the fact that we

are working with a sample. A second reason for a match rate of less than 100% could be that our

matching algorithm fails to recognize songs. To investigate this possibility, we hand-checked a

file with 2,000 randomly chosen unmatched transfers, comparing these downloads against our

sample. Only five of the unmatched songs were in our sample. As a result, we believe that the

18% match rate mostly reflects transfers of songs that are not in our sample.

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Descriptive Statistics

As this is one of the few data sets that allow us to directly observe P2P users, we describe our

data in some detail. A first stylized fact is that file sharing is truly global in nature. While over

ninety percent of users are in developed countries, a total of 150 countries are represented in the

data. U.S. users make up 31% of the sample. Table 2 shows the top countries for users and

downloads. As the data indicate, there is only a loose correlation between user share and other

country covariates such as Internet use or the software piracy rate. Column 3 in Table 2

confirms that interactions among file sharers transcend geography and language. U.S. users

download only 45.1% of their files from other U.S. users, with the remainder coming from a

diverse range of countries including Germany (16.5%), Canada (6.9%) and Italy (6.1%).

While file sharing activities are dispersed geographically, only a limited number of songs are

transferred with any frequency. Table 3 shows the average song is downloaded 4.6 times over

the study period, but the median number of downloads is zero.7 Although our sample is

representative of all commercially relevant music in the second half of 2002, it is striking to see

that more than 60% of the songs in our sample are never downloaded. Aggregated up to the

album level, users made 70 downloads from the average album in our sample. The most popular

album among file sharers (and the second-best seller) has 1799 downloads, while the median

number of downloads per album is 16, the 75th percentile is 63, the 90th percentile is 195, and

the 95th percentile is 328. Both downloads and sales closely follow a power-law (pareto)

distribution.

File sharing is limited to a select number of songs and most of these songs come from just a few

charts. Table 3 shows that songs on the Top Current chart (“Billboard 200”) are most frequently 7The 75th percentile of downloads per song is 2, the 90th percentile is 11, and the 95th percentile is 22.

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downloaded. Downloads from this chart alone make up 48% of all file transfers. Another 25%

come from the “Alternative” category. The remaining 9 charts are not particularly popular

among file sharers. In view of the low cost of sharing and sampling music on P2P, one could

expect users to seek out a great variety of songs representing many musical styles. But this is not

the case. P2P downloads closely resemble the play lists of Top 40 radio stations. As a result, it

is not surprising that songs from higher-selling albums are downloaded more frequently (Table

4). In the top quartile of sales, albums average 200 downloads. In the bottom category, the

mean number of downloads is only 11. This suggests that common factors drive downloads and

sales, which is a key concern for the development of our empirical strategy.

V. Empirical Strategy

Econometrics

Our goal is to measure the effect of file sharing on sales. We observe sales and downloads at the

album-week level for seventeen weeks. These panel data allow us to estimate a model with

album fixed effects,

itis

sititit tDXS μνωγβ ++++= . (1)

i indicates the album, t denotes time in weeks, Sit is observed sales, Xit is a vector of time-varying

album characteristics that includes a measure of the title’s popularity in the U.S., Dit is the

number of downloads for all songs on an album, and ωs controls for time trends (a flexible

polynomial or week fixed effects). The key concern in our empirical work is that the number of

downloads is likely to be correlated with unobserved album-level heterogeneity. As the

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descriptive statistics suggest, the popularity of an album is likely to drive both file sharing and

sales, implying the parameter of interest γ will be estimated with a positive bias. The album

fixed effects νi control for some aspects of popularity, but only imperfectly so because the

popularity of many releases in our sample changes quite dramatically during the study period.

We address this issue by instrumenting for Dit in a 2SLS model. Valid instruments Zit predict

file sharing but are uncorrelated with the second-stage error μit. As in the differentiated products

literature, where the problem is correlation between prices and unobserved product quality, we

use cost shifters to break the link between unobserved popularity, downloads and sales. An

advantage of our instruments, which we discuss below, is that they do not rely on the common

but potentially problematic assumption that product characteristics are exogenous (Nevo 2001).8

Instruments

Our most important instrument is the number of German secondary school kids who are on

vacation in a given week. German users provide about one out of every six U.S. downloads,

making Germany the most important foreign supplier of songs.9 German school vacations

produce an increase in the supply of files and make it easier for U.S. users to download music.10

During holidays German teens can spend more time trading music online, since they do most of

their file sharing at home (Niesyto 2002). School vacations also allow the German kids to stay

up later, which means they can engage in file sharing during the peak U.S. trading hours (early

evening, EST). Supporting this intuition, we find that the number of German kids on vacation is 8Appendix B of Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005) presents a formal model of purchase and download behavior which is the foundation for our econometric approach. In particular it shows why we can use linear demand equations rather than the more complicated transformations which are typical in this literature (Berry 1994; Bresnahan, Stern and Trajtenberg 1997). 9The important role of German file sharing users is documented in the authoritative BigChampagne database (OECD 2004). Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005) provides intuition on why this connection is so strong. 10Appendix C of Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005) shows German users are always net suppliers to file sharing networks, and this effect is accentuated during weeks when many kids are on vacation.

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a significant predictor of the number of files uploaded from Germany to the United States

(p=0.011). The effect is particularly large for music genres that are popular in Germany.

For German vacations to be a valid instrument, they must not be directly related to U.S. music

demand. This seems likely because the vacation variable varies over time for reasons that are

specific to Germany. The sixteen German Bundesländer (states) start their academic year at

different points in time to smooth the demand for the German tourism industry and avoid traffic

jams (Kultusministerkonferenz 2002). For example, Bavarian students were still on summer

vacation during the first week of our study period while Rheinland-Pfälzer kids were already

back in school (see Figure 1). A second difference to a typical U.S. vacation schedule is that

many, but not all Bundesländer grant their students one or two weeks of fall vacation. In

Rheinland-Pfalz, this happened in weeks 4 and 5. Bavaria, in contrast, did not schedule a longer

fall recess. These länder-specific holidays move from year to year. A Bundesland with early

summer vacations in one year is given a later slot in the following year (Agentur Lindner 2004).

As we explain in greater detail below, there are additional reasons to believe this variable is

exogenous. If file sharing were eliminated tomorrow, German school holidays would have no

relation to U.S. record sales.

We create three additional instruments by interacting the German-kids-on-vacation variable with

album-specific characteristics. These instruments are particularly useful because they vary

across both time and albums and provide identification even if a full set of week and album fixed

effects is included.

German-kids-on-vacation × band is on tour in Germany: Tours spur local interest and sales of an

album, and they are likely to create a positive supply shock of downloadable files. This

instrument is not directly related to U.S. sales because the promotional effect of tours will not

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spill across the Atlantic and because the timing of fall and winter concerts in Germany typically

reflects idiosyncratic features like venue availability and weather. We expect the effect of

German vacations to be even larger if an artist happens to be on tour in Germany that week.

German-kids-on-vacation × indicator for misspellings in song titles: To download a song, a

user’s search query must match a shared file. At the time of our study, file sharing programs

were rather rigid in determining matches.11 Unless both the searcher and sharer agree on the

naming convention, no match will occur. This two-sided search problem suggests that songs

with unconventionally spelled titles may be more difficult to find. We use MS Word’s spell

checker to determine if an album has any song titles with an unconventional spelling. We expect

misspellings to reduce the size of the positive supply shock coming from German vacations.

German-kids-on-vacation × rank of album on German charts: Songs from popular albums in

Germany are easier to download because the supply of these files is larger. Our measure for

German popularity is the rank of the album on the weekly German Top 100 chart (Musikmarkt

2002). Obviously, there is a concern that these chart positions might also measure U.S.

popularity. However, the instrument is included along with album fixed effects, so it is the

timing of the chart rankings in Germany that identifies downloads. There are important

differences in the dynamics of song popularity in the two countries due to taste differences and

differences in album release dates.

For all our instruments, we provide additional evidence for their exogeneity in the following

sections. Summary statistics for the instruments are in Table 5. Each measure exhibits

noticeable variation.

11For example, “lose yourself,” the name of a popular song, would typically return over a thousand results, but mistyping even one character (such as “lose yourse;f”) or omitting part of a word (“lose yours”) returned zero results.

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Mechanisms Underlying the Main Instruments

Our analysis presumes that each instrument influences download costs, and that these costs

impact the number of file transfers. We test this idea by analyzing more detailed server log files

which allow us to calculate the download time and success rate of download attempts. We

construct five measures of download costs: the time between a download request and the

successful initiation of the download (C1), the time between a search request and a download

request (C2), the time between the initiation of the download and its successful completion (C3),

the ratio of search requests to the number of successful downloads (C4), and the percentage of

failed or canceled download requests (C5). Each Ci term captures aspects of delay or frustration

which a U.S. downloader might experience. The measures are aggregated up to the album-week.

For example, C1 is the average time until download initiation among all observed requests for

that album in a particular week.

Mean Ci values are presented in the last row of Table 6. The first three columns show that the

typical file takes twenty minutes to download, starting from the initial search until the transfer is

complete.12 There are also long delays for top-selling albums, suggesting there is an ubiquitous

scarcity of supply. While slow download speeds are the norm in our data, the estimates in Table

6 show that searching and downloading audio files in the U.S. is considerably easier when a

larger number of German school children are on vacation. This reduction is even larger when

the artist is on tour and when the album is highly ranked on the German charts.13 The

misspellings interaction significantly increases the time between a search and a download request

as well as the number of unfulfilled downloads (C2, C4, C5), but it has little effect on the time it

12Gummadi, Dunn, Saroiu, Gribble, Levy and Zahorjan (2003) independently document these long download times. This likely reflects the fact that only a third of the U.S. users in our data had a broadband connection. 13Note that the German tour and singles chart variable parameters are identified using only within album variation since fixed effects are included. This mitigates concerns that album popularity in the U.S. is driving the parameter estimates.

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takes to transfer a file (C1, C3). This is consistent with the argument that misspellings create

confusion, though they do not slow down the file transfer itself. The estimated effects on

download times are economically significant. For example, a one standard deviation increase in

the German vacation variable implies a 1.25 minute reduction in the time for a download to

begin (C1), which is an eighth of the typical delay..

These results are meaningful only if the cost of downloading influences the number of file

transfers. This is not obviously true because P2P users can engage in other activities while files

are being downloaded, which could mean they are insensitive to the time cost of file sharing. To

check if the variation in download time that is due to our instruments has a significant impact on

the number of transfers, we estimate the system

itiitit

itiititενCDμνδZC

++= ++=

, (2)

where Zit is the full list of instruments and Cit denotes total download time (C1+C2+C3). The last

two columns of Table 6 shows that P2P users are fairly sensitive to the time cost of file sharing:

a one standard deviation increase in download time reduces downloads by almost half of their

mean. We find similar effects when we separately estimate equation (2) for each of the five Ci

terms. These estimates confirm our initial claims. German vacations influence the cost of

downloading, and this effect has an important impact on the number of downloads in the U.S.14

Specific Concerns with Individual Instruments15

14 A different approach to show that German vacations influence downloading activity is to look at international data. We find that school holidays have an important effect only in countries whose time zones are complementary to Germany’s. Appendix C of Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005) presents this point in detail. 15A general concern is that the instruments are based on high frequency variation in download costs. Unfavorable conditions might lead users to simply defer downloads to a later time, in which case our second stage estimates will be attenuated to zero. Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005) shows this concern is not warranted, since users are impatient and quickly lose interest in an album.

19

German-kids-on-vacation: A potential difficulty with the vacation variable is that it might be

correlated with time-varying album popularity in the U.S. We perform a number of tests to see if

this is the case. First, we check if German vacations happen to coincide with official U.S.

holidays. We find that there is little overlap.16 A second possibility is that German school

vacations proxy for American vacations which are likely to have a direct impact on music sales.

As there is no centralized data on holidays for all 14,000 U.S. school districts, we collect

information on the number college students who are out of school during our study period. The

sample includes all schools in the top two tiers of U.S. News and World Report’s 2002 ranking.

Information on school breaks is available for 157 schools, leaving us with data for 2.17 million

students, almost a quarter of all U.S. college students. Figure 1 compares the vacation patterns in

Germany and the U.S. There are marked differences. When some German kids are off in early

fall, U.S. students are mostly in school. During the Thanksgiving break in the U.S., German kids

are in school. Both populations are off during the Christmas break, although the break starts

earlier for U.S. students. To test more formally if the number of German kids on vacation

proxies for the number of U.S. kids, we include the latter in the first stage of equation (1). We

find no evidence that the measured effect of German vacations on American music downloads is

mediated by U.S. vacations.17

In a final test, we check more directly if the German vacation variable is in fact uncorrelated with

U.S. demand for music albums. We do this by interacting the instrument with an album’s rank

on the U.S. MTV charts.18 MTV rankings have the advantage that videos are often shown prior

16 Estimates over our 17 week observation period yield: US Holidayst = 1.148 (1.61) - 0.182 (0.16) ×German Kids, where US Holidays is the number of official American holidays (such as Columbus Day or Thanksgiving) in week t and German Kids is the German holiday instrument. 17 Controlling for the entire set of instruments, the estimated effect of German vacations on downloads changes from 0.667 (0.054) without the U.S. students-on-break variable to 0.643 (0.057) with this variable. 18 We thank one of our referees for this suggestion. We also used the Billboard Airplay ranking to explore these effects, with similar results.

20

to the release of a CD, at a time when songs from a forthcoming album first appear on file-

sharing networks. This interaction is included in both stages of equation (1).

itis

sittititit

itis

sittititit

tMTVGkidsDXS

tMTVGkidsZXD

μνωϕγβ

ενωϕδβ

+++×++=

+++×++=

22

11

ˆ , (3)

where Zit is our full set of instruments. As required under our assumptions, φ1 is positive:

German vacations have a larger effect for files that are more popular in the U.S. In the second

stage, however, φ2 is economically small and statistically insignificant. When an album becomes

more popular in the U.S., this boost in popularity is not directly related to German vacations,

supporting our claim that the holiday shocks are exogenous.

A second concern is that Germans supply only a narrow slice of music that is of interest to U.S.

file sharers. If those who like the type of music that Germans make available substitute

downloads for purchases in an atypical fashion, we measure a local average treatment effect, not

a true population effect (Imbens and Angrist 1994). Fortunately, there is substantial overlap

between American and German musical tastes. Of the albums that entered our sample via the

Billboard 200, 62.65% are also on the top 100 German charts. More generally, we study

Amazon rankings to compare sales ranks in the two countries (Goolsbee and Chevalier 2003).

With the exception of Latin and Country music, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks tests

cannot reject the null of equal distributions for the eleven genres in our sample. In the robustness

section of the paper, we test if the undersupply of Latin and Country music affects our estimates.

We show that this is not the case, suggesting the measured effect of downloads on sales is likely

to be a good estimate of the average population effect.

German-kids-on-vacation × indicator for misspellings in song titles: Because misspellings

appear to be more likely in some genres than in others, one might argue that this indicator is

21

likely to proxy for album popularity. In our application, this concern is not valid for two reasons.

First, as an empirical matter, we find that misspellings are not correlated with sales, even in

models without album or genre fixed effects.19 Second, all our specifications presented in the

results section include album fixed effects which control for an album’s time-invariant

popularity.

A second difficulty with the misspelling instrument could be that misspellings cause our song

matching algorithm to fail. This would result in a negative relationship between misspellings

and measured downloads, even if misspellings had no effect on actual downloads. More

importantly, the second-stage estimates would be attenuated towards zero, since the variation in

fitted downloads would be largely due to noise. Several pieces of evidence suggest this is not

true. First, the estimates in the last sub-section show that misspellings do in fact have real effects

on transfer times and user behavior. Second, we can check for misspellings in unmatched

downloads. If the criticism is correct, there should be more misspellings in the unmatched than

in the matched sample. This is not the case.20

German-kids-on-vacation × rank of album on German charts: The idea underlying this

instrument is that vacation periods in Germany will boost downloads in the U.S. more when

many German users make a particular file available. Because the instrument is included along

with album fixed effects, it is the timing of the chart rankings in Germany that identify

downloads. However, if U.S. popularity shocks happen to coincide with high German chart

positions, we would measure the effect of downloads on sales with a positive bias. We can test

for this spurious correlation in two ways. First, assuming that the German vacation variable is a

19 The effect of misspellings on sales is statistically insignificant and economically small. A one-standard-deviation increase in misspellings raises sales by a mere 11,000 copies (less than ten percent of the mean) during our entire study period. 20 The rates are 0.041 (N=35614) and 0.038 (N=7163), in the unmatched and matched samples respectively. The Pearson χ2 statistic is 1.402.

22

valid instrument, we can perform overidentification tests for this and the other interactions that

we use as instruments. These tests, reported in the results section of the paper, provide no

indication that any of our instruments are invalid. A second and more direct test is to see

whether shocks in U.S. demand are correlated with German popularity.21 Under our hypotheses,

U.S. demand shocks must not get magnified when albums become more popular in Germany.

For example, we expect U.S. vacations to increase P2P activity, but this increase must not vary

with German popularity. The model is,

itis

s

ittittitttitit

t

MTVGkidsMTVUkidsGchartsUkidsUkidsZD

ενω

ϕϕϕϕδ

+++

×+×+×++= 4321 (4)

Ukidst denotes the number of U.S. college students on break (our measure of U.S. demand

shocks), Gchartsit is a title’s rank on the German charts, and MTVit is the position on the MTV

chart (our measure of U.S. popularity). The effect of interest in this specification, φ2, shows

whether a shock in demand in the U.S. is mediated by German popularity. This is not the case:

φ2 is -0.0008 with a standard error of 0.0134, and this effect is only one tenth of the size of the

German kids × German chart interaction in our later specifications. The data show that relative

popularity in Germany interacts with German but not with U.S. vacations.

VI. Results

Before turning to the estimates, it is instructive to graph some of the data.. Figure 2 shows the

weekly time series of sales and purchases for one of the most popular albums in our sample.

This “Superstar” album was largely ignored in file sharing networks until it became available for

sale in week ten of our sample. This suggests it is the publicity associated with an official

21 We thank one of our referees for this suggestion.

23

release which drives downloads as well as sales. Notice also the rapid but non-monotone decay

in sales and downloads, which highlights the importance of using high-frequency data.

Panel Analysis

In Table 7 we report results for equation (1). The unit of observation is the album-week. The

models include a control in both stages for time-varying U.S. popularity, the album’s position on

the American MTV charts, and a polynomial time trend of degree six. As expected, a simple

OLS specification yields a large positive effect of 1.093 with a standard error of 0.023. A model

which adds album fixed effects is given in column (1). While we continue to find a positive

effect of downloads on sales, the relationship is now much weaker. The remaining estimates in

Table 7 instrument for downloads. We begin by using the number of German kids on school

vacation (column II). The first-stage estimates imply that a one standard deviation increase in

the number of children on vacation boosts weekly album downloads by slightly more than one

half of their mean,, an effect that is statistically significant and economically meaningful. Once

we instrument for downloads, the estimated effect of file sharing on sales is small and

statistically indistinguishable from zero.

We next consider specifications in which we add the band-on-tour-in-Germany interaction and

the remaining time-varying instruments (columns III and IV). The tour and the German-chart

interactions are of particular interest since they vary across albums as well as over time and

provide an additional source of identification. The instruments have the expected first-stage

signs. Tours and better chart positions magnify the effect of German students on vacation. The

reverse is true for misspellings, which make it more difficult to search for files. Sargan

24

overidentification tests are reported at the bottom of the table. In these richer models downloads

continue to have economically small and statistically insignificant effects on sales.

To help improve the precision of our second-stage estimates, in column (5), we allow the effect

of the German vacation instrument to vary by album. The logic for including these interactions

follows from the same arguments used for the other instruments. When German kids spend more

time on P2P networks, the resulting supply shock will vary across albums because the students

supply the files that happen to be popular in Germany at the time of the shock. As before, we

face a potential problem with using this type of variation: If it so happens that the exogenous

German shock is spuriously correlated with album-specific surges in popularity in the U.S., our

estimates would be biased. The specification in column (5) addresses this issue in four ways. As

before, we include album fixed effects to make sure it is the timing of the supply shocks that

identify downloads. Second, we introduce album-specific U.S. popularity effects at both stages

of the model by interacting the MTV variable with the album fixed effects. The model thus

controls for changes in the U.S. popularity of a release. Third, relying on the assumption that the

number of German kids on vacation is a valid instrument, we conduct overidentification tests in a

specification that includes only two instruments: the vacation variable and one of the vacation ×

album-fixed-effect interactions. There are 680 such tests. To err on the side of caution, we

exclude from the final specification all interactions whose overidentification tests cannot reject

the null at a significance level of greater than 0.20. There are 21 such interactions. Fourth, we

estimate a variant of equation (3), now with German kids × album fixed effect × U.S. MTV

interactions. In the sales equation, these interactions are individually and collectively not

different from zero.

25

Column (5) in Table 7 reports results with the album interactions. Our instruments retain their

statistical significance.22 The mean of the coefficients on the vacation-album-fixed-effect

interactions is -1.143, leaving the average effect of vacations on downloads almost unchanged

from the earlier specifications. Grouping the album interactions by genre, we find that vacations

increase downloads the most for music types that are popular in Germany: the mean of the

vacation-album-fixed-effect coefficients is -0.71 for International albums and -0.91 for Rock. In

contrast, the effect of vacations is much smaller, but still positive, for genres that are less popular

in Germany (the mean interactions are -1.52 for Latin music, -1.54 for Country, and -1.57 for

Holiday music.) At the second stage, the estimated effect of downloads on sales is virtually

unchanged in this specification, but the standard error drops considerably.

To see if our results are driven by our modeling choice for the time trend in downloads and sales,

we replace the polynomial time trend with week fixed effects in columns (6) and (7) of Table 7.

In these specifications, we lose the German-kids-on-vacation instrument because it does not vary

across releases. The results remain similar, with more precise second-stage estimates when we

allow the effect of vacations to vary by release (column VII).

Table 7 suggests file sharing had a surprisingly small effect on sales that is statistically

indistinguishable from zero. The instrumented point estimates fall within a very narrow range

and suggest that file sharing did not heavily impact the music industry as a whole. If file sharing

were to be eliminated, the most negative estimate (column VI) implies industry sales for all of

2002 would increase by 6.5 million albums. Using the most positive estimate (column VII),

industry sales would fall by 8.9 million copies.23 In 2002, the industry sold 803 million CDs.

22 The vacations × misspellings interaction is collinear with the vacations × album fixed effects and cannot be included in this specification. 23The impact is the difference between predicted sales and the fitted value when downloads are set at zero. Using equation (1), the summed impact for our album sample and for our 17 week observation period is ∑t∑iSit(Dit)-Sit(0)

26

The robustness of these results extends to specifications not reported in Table 7. For example,

we arrive at the same conclusions if we omit the misspelling or the German rank instrument.

Dynamic Analysis

The models in Table 7 only allow for a contemporaneous effect of downloads on sales, but it is

quite possible that downloads influence sales at a later point in time. For example, users might

sample music which they consider buying in the future. In Table 8, we address this issue by

studying the effect of several weeks of downloads on sales and by estimating Generalized

Methods of Moments (GMM) models.

A difficulty with the first approach is that downloads are highly correlated across time, which

prevents us from including downloads in past weeks as individual covariates. Instead, we study

the effect of a weighted sum of current and past downloads on current sales. Downloads are

instrumented using the core set of instruments (specification IV in Table 7) or the extended set

(specification V). Our formal measure is the weighted stock of current and previous weekly

downloads, DtStock = ∑s≥0δs×Dt-s.24 In these models, we continue to find small and statistically

insignificant effects for the weighted sum of three weeks of downloads, both in specifications

with a polynomial time trend (Table 8, I&II) and with week fixed effects (III&IV). As in the

panel results, standard errors drop significantly with the extended set of instruments (II&IV).

We also constructed stock variables for the sum of downloads during the past four and six weeks

and found no evidence of a sales crowd-out in these models.

= γ×∑t∑iDit. We multiply this number by a scaling factor to get the annual impact for the entire music industry, γ×240m (this calculation is described in more detail below Table 11). 24 The weights δs are chosen in a grid search that minimizes the unexplained fraction of the variance in our sales equation subject to δs≥δs+1. The optimal weights (δ0,…, δT) are (1,0.1,0.1). It is interesting that the weights which best fit our data give much importance to downloads in the current week, while downloads further back in the past do not heavily influence sales. Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005) presents additional results showing that file sharers are impatient. These findings are consistent with those of Einav (2004) for movie consumption.

27

Models (5) and (6) in Table 8 use the GMM estimator developed by Arellano and Bond (1991).

The GMM models are more general than the previous specifications in the sense that we do not

need to make any assumptions about the appropriate lag structure. The lag of sales that is

included on the right-hand side accounts for any effect that past downloads might have had on

current sales. The model is estimated in first differences. We instrument for past sales using

suitable lags of their own levels and our core set of first-differenced instruments.25 Arellano-

Bond tests for autocorrelation are applied to the first-difference equation residuals. Second-order

autocorrelation would indicate that some lags of the dependent variable which are used as

instruments are endogenous, but the tests reveal no such problem. The results of these models,

with a polynomial time trend as in (5) or with week fixed effects as in (6), are similar to our

previous findings. The estimates are fairly precise, making these GMM models an alternative to

using our extended set of instruments.

“Drop-out” Hypothesis

A possible explanation for our inability to find a statistically significant relationship between file

sharing and sales is that file sharers and consumers who purchase music are in fact two separate

groups. According to this hypothesis, growth in file sharing does displace sales but we cannot

identify this effect because our data do not reflect the increasing number of file sharers.

There are three responses to this conjecture. First, it is inconsistent with what we know about

consumer behavior. The premise underlying the “drop-out” hypothesis is that file sharers no

25The formal model is,

itissitittiit tDXSS μνωγβα +++++= −1, . The lagged sales term soaks up any delayed effect of downloads, regardless of how far in the past they occurred (taking a Koyck transformation yields a specification with infinite lags of downloads on the right hand side). Estimating in first differences purges the album fixed effects. We instrument for the first-differenced Si,t-1 which are now endogenous.

28

longer buy CDs. However, every survey we are aware of, including the industry studies listed in

the literature section, indicates that downloaders, even heavy ones, continue to purchase legal

CDs. We corroborated these findings with our own survey of individuals who were engaged in

file sharing (Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf 2005). Ninety percent reported that they recently

purchased a CD, a value reaching one hundred percent among the most active downloaders.

Secondly, we can test the “drop-out” hypothesis directly by controlling for the increasing number

of users. An implication of the hypothesis is that our download sampling rate declines over time

because the servers for which we have data handle a limited number of users. Growth in file

sharing, however, is managed by additional server capacity which we do not observe. If we

accounted for this growth, the hypothesis suggests, we would find a displacement effect because

the “drop-outs” are replacing purchases with transfers. We address this issue by scaling up the

number of downloads in our sample to reflect the growth in file sharing. We use the number of

FastTrack/KaZaA users as a proxy for the rate of growth.26 Because the number of users

increased by over a third over our observation period, we should be able to detect a drop-out

effect if it exists. Table 9 reports these estimates for three panel models, three models using a

stock of previous downloads, and for two GMM models. In all these specifications, downloads

still do not have a significant effect on sales. A third approach to testing the drop-out hypothesis

is to compare the long-run sales growth of individual genres of music. We return to this point in

Section VII.

26 We use 22 data points on the number of KaZaA users in the period from 9/9/2002 to 2/4/2003 to fit a fractional polynomial trend in the number of users. The model explains 85% of the variation.

29

Robustness Tests

To further corroborate our results, we perform a large number of robustness checks, some of

which we report in Table 10.27 The tests fall in three broad categories: models for subsets of our

sample, alternative econometric specifications, and models that allow the effect of file sharing on

sales to vary by popularity. We first investigate the importance of the holiday season when

many consumers purchase CDs as gifts. It is possible that downloads are less substitutable for

sales during this period due to the reluctance to give downloaded music as a present. Note that

this is also an argument against the idea that file sharing is the main cause of the sales decline,

since purchases are heavily concentrated in the holiday season. Still, it is straightforward to test

for this effect. In Table 10, we exclude the December data from our sample. We report these

results for specifications IV, VI and VII of Table 7. Even without the December data, there is no

statistically significant effect of file sharing on sales. In a second test, we omit albums that are

not downloaded during our study period. These less popular releases might have little sales even

in the absence of file sharing, making the effect of P2P on sales miniscule by definition.

Omitting these albums, however, does not change our conclusions. The same holds if we restrict

our sample to better-selling albums.

We next test if the undersupply of Latin and Country music influences our estimates. Recall

from Section V.D. that this would cause a problem only if the substitutability of downloads and

album purchases varies across music genres. The last specification in the first panel of Table 10

re-estimates our models without Latin or Country releases. As expected, this increases the effect

of vacations on downloads, from a coefficient estimate of 0.667 in model IV of Table 7 to 0.744

in this model. However, the measured effect of downloads on sales remains similar, a finding

27We thank our referees for suggesting several of these points. Many additional robustness tests can be found in Oberholzer-Gee and Strumpf (2005). This working paper also presents pooled specifications utilizing only cross-album variation, and these estimates also show file sharing has little impact on sales.

30

that is consistent with the idea that the substitutability of downloads and purchases is roughly

similar across genres.

In the second panel in Table 10, we explore two alternative specifications. To reduce the

importance of outlier albums with a large number of sales, we use log(sales) as the dependent

variable. The impact on sales continues to be insignificant in all three specifications. In the next

model, we first-difference both sales and downloads and express them as percentage changes.

An advantage of this model is that it nicely captures album-specific trends in popularity.

Unfortunately, this advantage comes at the cost of a reduced number of observations due to the

first-differencing and the weeks with zero downloads or sales. Using our core set of instruments,

we now find a positive and statistically significant but economically small effect of downloads

on sales. However, the estimated coefficient drops considerably and is insignificant when we

introduce week fixed effects.

The previous models constrained the effect of downloads on sales to be identical for all releases.

In the bottom panel of Table 10, we relax this assumption. We first explore the idea that the

effect varies by artist popularity. We do this by interacting the download variable with two

measures of popularity: an artist’s last and his best-ever Billboard ranking. The rankings

themselves are subsumed in the album fixed effects, but the interaction term varies by week. To

make it easier to interpret the results, Billboard ranks are coded as [201 − actual rank] so that

larger numbers indicate greater popularity.28 We estimate these models using specification IV in

Table 7. There is no indication that more popular artists are affected differentially. Neither the

interaction terms nor the joint effect of the main and interaction terms are statistically significant.

28More precisely, the term is a three-way interaction: [downloads × indicator that the artist had a Billboard ranking × (201−Billboard rank)].

31

From a welfare point of view, it is particularly interesting to study variations in the effect of file

sharing across younger and older artists because such differences might influence their decision

to start and continue a career in music. Interacting downloads with the number of albums an

artist produced, we find no significant differences across more or less experienced performers.

Finally, we investigate whether the effect of downloads on sales varies with the number of

popular songs on an album. As documented earlier, most file sharers obtain just a few songs

from an album. One might suspect that P2P is a fairly good substitute for albums with only one

or two popular songs. We calculate a Herfindahl index for each album-week as a measure of

concentration of downloads. The index is included in both the first and the second stage. There

is no evidence that albums with more concentrated downloads suffer disproportionately from file

sharing.

VII. Quasi-experimental Evidence

Our data also allow us to study the impact of P2P on sales in a quasi-experimental context. In

particular we can examine how album sales respond to exogenous variation in file sharing

intensity due to seasonality, geography, music genre, or secular growth. One of the advantages

of this approach is that we can utilize several years of data, which allows us to investigate the

long-term impact of file sharing. In all cases we continue to use sales data from Nielsen

SoundScan (2005).

The first experiment involves variation over time. The number of file sharing users in the U.S.

drops twelve percent over the summer (estimated from BigChampagne 2006) because college

students are away from their high-speed campus Internet connections. If downloads crowd out

sales, we should observe that the share of albums sold in the summer increases following the

32

advent of file-sharing. We consider a differences-in-differences approach and compare the share

of summer sales in the period prior to file sharing (the control group) with sales following the

introduction of file sharing (the treatment group). We calculate the share of album sales

occurring in the May to September period using weekly SoundScan data. We find that the

introduction of widespread file-sharing has had virtually no impact on summer sales. In the four

years (1995-1998) preceding the introduction of Napster, the average share of summer sales was

37.0% with a range of 36.4-37.8%. During the more recent period of extensive file-sharing

(1999-2005), the average share of summer sales was 37.2% with a range of 35.9-37.8%.

A second experiment considers spatial variation. Recall that U.S. users download over a third of

their music files from Western European countries such as Germany and Italy. Due to time zone

differences, such transfers are easier for East rather than West Coast users. This is because the

peak file-sharing period (7pm to 3am) overlaps between Western Europe and the East Coast,

which have a six hour time difference, but not between Europe and the West Coast, which have a

nine hour difference. So East Coast users can draw on a larger base of files from international

users than West Coast users. Consistent with these differences, we find that there is more file

sharing on the East Coast than on the West Coast.29 If file sharing had a large negative effect on

record sales, then sales during the file sharing era should decrease more on the East Coast than

on the West Coast. For the period 1998-2002, we obtained total album sales for the one hundred

one largest “Designated Market Areas” from SoundScan. Despite the differences in the

availability of files, sales have not noticeably varied across the country. In 1998, the last year in

the pre-P2P period, the share of album sales in the Eastern Time Zone was 43.9%. This share

has hardly moved since then. In 1999-2002, the mean was 43.5% and the range was 42.7-44.0%.

29 Unfortunately, IP addresses can only be matched imperfectly to locations, so this finding is merely suggestive.

33

This is consistent with some common national factors, rather than file-sharing, driving sales

trends.

A third experiment, which also provides a test of the “drop-out” hypothesis, is to see whether

download intensity influences long-run sales growth after explicitly controlling for trends in

music format popularity. The model for the period 1999-2005 is,

Sales Growthg = α + γ×Downloadsg + λ×Listenershipg + eg (5)

where g indicates genre, Sales Growthg is the percentage growth in sales over 1999-2005,

Downloadsg are measures of genre-specific download intensity from our data, and Listenershipg

is the genre-specific radio listenership growth rate (Arbitron 2006) which controls for trends in

popularity. Since downloading is relatively concentrated across genres (Table 3), the “drop-out”

hypothesis predicts a greater sales reduction for genres which are popular on file sharing

networks. The estimated γ is not statistically significant using either download levels or

downloads relative to purchases. For example, using mean downloads per album and controlling

for genre sales levels, the estimated γ is 0.05 with a standard error of 0.52 (the mean for

downloads is 61.2, and for sales growth it is -5.8).

Finally, we consider whether growth in file sharing can be linked to changes in total album sales.

The key question is whether periods of particularly rapid growth in the user-base are linked to

sharper sales reductions. A simple test is to consider annual sales since the advent of widespread

file sharing in 1999. According to SoundScan, album sales increased in three of the seven years

over this period, in contrast to movie ticket sales which rose in only two years. It is worth

stressing that extended sales slumps are common in the music business, even prior to file

sharing. While real revenues have fallen 28% over 1999-2005, real revenue fell 35% during the

34

collapse of disco music in 1978-1983. Real sales also dropped 6% over 1994-1997.30 More

direct evidence comes from regressing total album sales, including paid digital downloads, on

the average number of simultaneous file sharing users in the U.S. (BigChampagne 2006),

Salest = γ×Userst + νm + μt (6)

where t indicates a month, and νm are monthly fixed effects which account for seasonality.

Using monthly data from August 2002-May 2006 (N=46) and defining Sales and Users in

millions (with respective sample means of 56.0m and 5.0m), the estimated γ=-0.427 with a

robust standard error of 0.33. There is little evidence that growth in the number of users has had

a statistically or economically significant effect on sales.31 The estimates remain insignificant if

equation (6) is estimated in first differences.

The results of these quasi experiments are consistent with our earlier findings. Looking at

variation in downloading intensity that is due to geography, seasonality, the genre of music, or

secular growth, we find no evidence that the advent of P2P technology is the primary cause of

the recent slump in music sales.

VIII. Conclusions

Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no

statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample. Even our most

negative point estimate (Table 7, model VI), implies that a one standard deviation increase in

file-sharing reduces an album’s weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to

be statistically distinguishable from zero. Because our sample was constructed to be

representative of the population of commercially relevant albums, we can use our estimates to

30These are calculated from nominal RIAA revenues listed in Lesk (2003) and RIAA (1998; 2006). 31If file sharing were eliminated, the point estimates imply monthly sales would only increase by 2.1m.

35

test hypotheses about the impact of P2P on the entire industry. Using ninety-five percent

confidence bands, these tests are presented in Table 11. Taking into account all our

(instrumented) estimates including the least precise results in Tables 7-9, we can reject a null that

P2P caused a sales decline greater than 24.1 million albums. For reference, the music industry

sold 803m CDs in 2002, which was a loss of 80m from the previous year (RIAA 2004). Our

estimates become more precise if we relax the assumption that file sharing only impacts

contemporaneous sales and if we allow for growth in the number of file sharers. For example,

the scaled GMM models in Table 9 reject a null of losses greater than 6.6 million. Relying on

our five most precise estimates, we conclude that the impact could not have been larger than 6.0

million albums. While file sharers downloaded billions of files in 2002, the consequences for the

industry amounted to no more than 0.7% of sales

If file sharing is not the culprit, what other factors can explain the decline in music sales?

Several plausible candidates exist. A first reason is the change in how music is distributed.

Between 1999 and 2003, more than 14% of music sales shifted from record stores to more

efficient discount retailers such as Wal-Mart, possibly reducing inventories. As a result, album

shipments, which are often cited to document the decline in the legal demand of music, fell much

more than actual sales.32 A second factor is the ending of a period of atypically high sales, when

consumers replaced older music formats with CDs. Perhaps more important than these

developments is the growing competition from other forms of entertainment. A shift in

entertainment spending towards recorded movies alone can largely explain the reduction in sales.

The sales of DVDs and VHS tapes increased by over $5 billion between 1999 and 2003. This

figure more than offsets the $2.6 billion reduction in album sales since 1999. Consumers also

32 In the 1999 to 2003 period, the number of shipped albums fell by 301 million but the number of albums that were sold declined by only 99 million.

36

spent more on video games, where spending increased by 40%, or $3 billion, between 1999 and

2003, and on cell phones. Teen cell phone use alone tripled between 1999 and 2003.

An interesting question is whether our results continue to hold in more recent years. Since the

time of our study, P2P technology has become more efficient, broadband access is much more

widespread, and the number of file sharers has doubled. While a full analysis is outside the

scope of this paper, there are several trends that are inconsistent with the view that P2P now

displaces sales on a large scale. First, our natural experiments, for which we have data up to

2005, give no indication that file sharing has caused a sales decline in more recent years.

Second, music sales have been flat or even rising in major markets with a quickly growing file-

sharing population. For example, in 2005 retail music sales rose in four of the five largest

national markets. Third, in the United States the entire drop in 2005 album sales is due to losses

at a single firm, the recently merged Sony-BMG, which has experienced severe post-merger

integration difficulties. If file sharing were responsible for the observed sales decline in the U.S.,

we would not expect this activity to only affect the products of a single firm.

The advent of the new P2P technologies can be considered in a broader context. A key question

is how social welfare changes with weaker property rights for information goods. To make such

a calculation, we would need to know how the production of music responds to the presence of

file sharing. Based on our results, we do not believe file sharing had a significant effect on the

supply of recorded music. For artists who produce commercially relevant products, the effects

documented in this study are simply too small to change the number or quality of recordings that

they release. And for new bands that are about to launch their career, the probability of success

is so low as to make the expected income from producing music virtually zero, so file sharing

will not change the relevant incentives. If we are correct in arguing that downloading has had

37

little effect on the incentives to produce music, we agree with Rob and Waldfogel (2006) who

find that file sharing likely increased aggregate welfare. The limited shifts from sales to

downloads are simply transfers between firms and consumers. But the sheer magnitude of P2P

activity, the billions of songs downloaded each year, suggests the added social welfare from file

sharing is likely to be high.

38

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43

TABLE 1 SAMPLE SALES BY CATEGORY

Observations Mean sales Std dev Min Max Full sample 680 143,096 344,476 74 3,430,264 Catalogue 50 46,833 40,031 219 223,085 Current Alternative 117 118,599 130,257 9,210 785,747 Hard Music Top Overall 19 28,304 22,103 2,945 86,416 Jazz Current 21 21,940 62,522 86 290,026 Latin 21 27,590 35,840 3,143 153,209 New artists 50 15,816 13,635 319 61,673 R&B 144 46,512 67,050 2,151 457,338 Rap 76 39,307 61,278 1,069 324,426 Top Current (“Billboard 200”) 83 744,022 710,054 4,092 3,430,264 Top Current Country 66 87,839 130,096 74 669,575 Top Soundtrack 33 44,920 79,264 1,788 318,538 NOTE. These figures only include sales over our seventeen week observation period. Most of the top-selling

albums are classified as “Current” for the purposes of this table

44

TABLE 2 THE GEOGRAPHY OF FILE SHARING

(numbers in %)

Country

Share of users

Share of downloads

Users in U.S. download from (%)

Users in U.S. upload to

(%)

Share World

Population

Share World GDP

Share World

Internet Users

Software Piracy Rate

United States 30.9 35.7 45.1 49.0 4.6 21.2 27.4 23 Germany 13.5 14.1 16.5 8.9 1.3 4.5 5.3 32 Italy 11.1 9.9 6.1 5.7 0.9 2.9 3.2 47 Japan 8.4 2.8 2.5 1.8 2.0 7.2 9.3 35 France 6.9 6.9 3.8 4.7 1.0 3.1 2.8 43 Canada 5.4 6.1 6.9 7.9 0.5 1.9 2.8 39 United Kingdom 4.1 4.0 4.2 4.2 1.0 3.1 5.7 26 Spain 2.5 2.6 1.8 2.0 0.6 1.7 1.3 47 Netherlands 2.1 2.1 1.9 1.6 0.3 0.9 1.6 36 Australia 1.6 1.9 0.8 2.2 0.3 1.1 1.8 32 Sweden 1.5 1.7 1.8 1.5 0.1 0.5 1.0 29 Switzerland 1.4 1.5 0.9 1.0 0.1 0.5 0.6 32 Brazil 1.3 1.4 1.2 1.3 2.9 2.7 2.3 55 Belgium 0.9 1.2 0.5 1.0 0.2 0.6 0.6 31 Austria 0.8 0.6 0.6 0.4 0.1 0.5 0.6 30 Poland 0.5 0.7 0.7 0.5 0.6 0.8 1.1 54 NOTE. Shares of users and downloads is from the file sharing dataset described in the text. All other statistics are from

the Central Intelligence Agency (2002, 2003), except the software piracy rates which are from the Business Software

Alliance (2003). All values are world shares, except the piracy rates are the fractions of business application software

installed without a license in the country. All non-file sharing data are for 2002 except population which is for 2003.

45

TABLE 3 DOWNLOADS BY GENRE

# songs

(# albums)in sample

Mean # of downloads Std dev Min Max

Song level

All genres 10271 4.645 21.462 0 1258 Catalogue 714 4.361 10.370 0 152 Alternative 1707 7.021 18.153 0 312 Hard 270 4.830 8.684 0 52 Jazz 261 0.333 0.920 0 7 Latin 309 0.550 2.927 0 28 New artists 711 0.609 7.039 0 184 R&B 2249 1.635 7.680 0 159 Rap 1227 0.920 4.887 0 82 Current 1342 17.182 51.286 0 1258 Country 913 1.974 6.382 0 128 Soundtrack 568 1.673 5.301 0 61

Album level

All genres 680 70.162 158.628 0 1799 Catalogue 50 62.280 103.114 0 680 Alternative 117 102.436 122.794 0 674 Hard 19 68.632 82.899 0 264 Jazz 21 4.143 4.542 0 13 Latin 21 8.095 26.344 0 121 New artists 50 8.660 33.097 0 229 R&B 144 25.542 56.494 0 433 Rap 76 14.855 24.487 0 119 Current 83 277.807 333.935 2 1799 Country 66 27.303 51.649 0 344 Soundtrack 33 28.788 36.611 0 185

46

TABLE 4 DOWNLOADS BY SALES – ALBUM LEVEL

Obs Mean # of downloads Std dev Min Max Mann-

Whitney

1st quartile: mean 7,235 copies [up to 12,493 copies]

170 11.358 38.472 0 402 - 14.067**

2nd quartile: mean 21,022 copies [up to 31,115 copies] 170 20.929 52.082 0 433 -12.431**

3rd quartile: mean 57.940 copies [up to 100,962 copies] 170 48.088 55.223 0 264 -8.187**

4th quartile: mean 486,184 copies [max 3,430,264 copies] 170 200.270 265.369 0 1799

NOTE. Mann Whitney test statistics are for the null that the 4th quartile with the highest sales comes from the same

population as the other sales quartiles.

** significant at the 1% level

47

48

TABLE 5 SUMMARY STATISTICS

Observations mean (std dev) min max

Sales (1,000s) 10093 9.580 0 874.137 (34.361)

Downloads 10093 4.360 0 368 (13.644) German kids on 10093 9.855 0 12.491

Vacation (million) (3.576) Band on tour in Germany 10093 0.003 0 1

(0.053) Misspelling indicator 10093 0.062 0 1 (0.187) Rank of single on German charts 10093 1.576 0 100

(calculated as 101 minus rank) (10.268) Rank of single on MTV charts 10093 2.158 0 100

(calculated as 101 minus rank) (13.568) Billboard rank previous album 10093 61.136 0 200

(calculated as 201 minus rank) (82.314) Best Billboard rank ever 10093 83.548 3 200

(calculated as 201 minus rank) (89.994) # previous releases 10093 6.718 0 194

(15.574) HHI downloads 10093 2.460 0 10000

(3.672)

TABLE 6 DOWNLOAD TIMES: RELATION TO INSTRUMENTS AND IMPACT ON NUMBER OF TRANSFERS

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) Impact of download time on

download quantity

Time: Download Request to Initiation

(sec)

Time: Search Request to Download Request

(sec)

Time: Initiation

Download to Completion

(sec)

Ratio: # Search Requests

to # Downloads

Percentage: Download Requests

which are not completed

Download Time

(1st stage)

Downloads (2nd stage)

C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C1+C2+C3 DitGerman kids on -32.005 -4.336 -26.031 -0.453 -2.351 -62.420

Vacation (million) (5.51)** (0.29)** (2.69)** (0.05)** (0.10)** (5.24)** German kids × -49.914 -3.966 -35.015 -0.480 -2.927 -89.010

Band on tour (20.31)* (1.73)* (13.35)** (0.22)* (0.51)** (17.83)** German kids × 22.494 6.157 8.609 0.672 1.963 7.302

Misspellings (33.66) (2.182)** (17.76) (0.25)** (0.58)** (40.59) German kids × -0.347 -0.034 -0.471 -0.005 -0.024 -0.849

rank German charts (0.18)* (0.02) (0.16)* (0.00)* (0.01)* (0.22)** Download time -0.006 ( 0.00)**Album Fixed Effects? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Observations 1662 1952 1332 2164 1952 1332 1332 Mean for Dependent Variable

609.08 91.02 796.20 12.21 62.96 1491.18 7.25

NOTE. Albums or album-weeks are omitted when the dependent variable is undefined (e.g. for C1 when there are no successful album download

initiations). Robust standard errors are in parentheses. These estimates are based on data from weeks 3-6 of our observation period (the data come from

more detailed log files which are only available during these weeks).

* significant at the 5% level

** significant at the 1% level

49

50

TABLE 7 PANEL ANALYSIS - DOWNLOADS AND ALBUM SALES

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) Sales 1st stage

down-loads

2nd stage Sales

1st stage down-loads

2nd stage sales

1st stage down-loads

2nd stage Sales

1st stage down-loads

2nd stage sales

1st stage down-loads

2nd stage Sales

1st stage down-loads

2nd stage sales

# downloads 0.277 0.003 0.024 -0.010 0.005 -0.027 0.037 (0.025)** (0.194) (0.189) (0.158) (0.062) (0.270) (0.065) German kids 0.671 0.670 0.667 1.818

on vacation (0.054)** (0.054)** (0.054)** (0.125)** German kids × 0.469 0.474 0.470 0.464 0.451

band on tour (0.168)** (0.167)** (0.161)** (0.167)** (0.161)** German kids × -0.288 -0.290

Misspellings (0.124)* (0.124)* German kids × 0.012 0.007 0.012 0.007

Germ charts (0.001)** (0.002)** (0.001)** (0.002)** U.S. MTV rank 0.079 0.036 0.089 0.037 0.088 0.035 0.089 0.058 -0.194 0.036 0.092 -0.042 -0.183 (0.020)** (0.008)** (0.021)** (0.008)** (0.021)** (0.008)** (0.021)** (0.103) (0.256) (0.008)** (0.022)** (0.102) (0.255) German kids ×

album FE No No No No No No No Yes No No No Yes No

MTV × album FE No No No No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes

Polynomial time trend Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No No

Week FE No No No No No No No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Album FE Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Observations 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 Prob χ2>0 on excluded instruments

0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000

Sargan test (p-value) 0.73 0.70 0.98 0.50 0.97

R-squared 0.75 0.74 0.76 0.74 0.76 0.73 0.76 0.74 0.79 0.82 0.77 0.85 0.79 NOTE. The unit of analysis is the album-week. Dependent variables are the number downloads at the 1st stage (summing all songs on an album) and album sales (1,000s).

Robust standard errors are in parentheses. Since all models include album fixed effects, the reported R-squared is the sum of the explained within-variance and the fraction of the

variance that is due to the fixed effects. Album-weeks prior to the release date are excluded from the sample.

** significant at the 1% level

* significant at the 5% level

51

TABLE 8 DYNAMIC PANEL ANALYSIS - DOWNLOADS AND LAGGED ALBUM SALES

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) 2nd stage

Sales 2nd stage

sales 2nd stage

Sales 2nd stage

sales GMM Δ sales

GMM Δ sales

Weighted ∑ of three weeks of 0.097 0.048 0.022 0.045 downloads (instrumented) (0.115) (0.039) (0.170) (0.041)

Δ downloads 0.029 0.047 (0.074) (0.078)

U.S. MTV rank 0.092 -0.016 0.097 -0.022 0.085 0.041 (0.015)** (0.169) (0.016)** (0.168) (0.091) (0.080) lagged sales 0.166 0.261 (0.100)) (0.117)* German kids × album FE in 1st stage No Yes No Yes No No

MTV × album FE No Yes No Yes No No Polynomial time trend? Yes Yes No No Yes No Week Fixed Effects? No No Yes Yes No Yes Album Fixed Effects? Yes Yes Yes Yes No No 1st-stage specification is as in Table 7, model 4 5 6 7

Observations 8739 8739 8739 8739 8739 8739 Arellano-Bond test for AR(1) in first differences: Pr > z 0.302 0.204

Arellano-Bond test for AR(2) in first differences: Pr > z 0.638 0.522

R-squared 0.92 0.96 0.92 0.97 NOTE. The dependent variable is album sales (1,000s). The number of downloads is instrumented using the Table

7 specification listed in the fifth row from the bottom. The weighted sum of three weeks of downloads includes the

current week. The weights are chosen in a grid search which minimizes the unexplained fraction of the variance in

our models. Models (5) and (6) use the Generalized Method of Moments estimator developed by Arellano and Bond

(1991). In this model, the typical standard error estimator tends to be downwards biased (Blundell and Bond 1998).

Standard errors are corrected using the two-step covariance matrix derived by Windmeijer (2000). Arellano-Bond

tests for autocorrelation are applied to the first-difference equation residuals. Second-order autocorrelation would

indicate that some lags of the dependent variable which are used as instruments are endogenous. The tests reveal no

such problem. Album-weeks prior to the release date are excluded from the sample.

* significant at the 5% level

** significant at the 1% level

52

TABLE 9 ROBUSTNESS CHECK WITH SCALED DOWNLOADS – TESTING THE “DROP-OUT” HYPOTHESIS

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) 1st stage downloads 2nd stage

Sales 1st stage

downloads 2nd stage

sales 1st stage

downloads 2nd stage

sales 2nd stage

Sales 2nd stage

Sales 2nd stage

Sales GMMΔ sales

GMM Δ sales

Scaled downloads -0.009 0.022 0.029 (0.126) (0.046) (0.049) Weighted ∑ of three 0.078 0.038 0.037

Weeks downloads (0.093) (0.030) (0.031) Δ downloads 0.072 0.123 (0.053) (0.072) German kids on 0.856 2.608

Vacation (million) (0.073)** (0.171)** German kids × 0.602 0.600 0.585

Band on tour (0.225)** (0.216)** (0.216)** German kids × -0.377

Misspellings (0.167)* German kids × 0.014 0.008 0.008

rank German charts (0.002)** (0.002)** (0.002)** U.S. MTV rank 0.036 0.089 -0.084 -0.198 -0.059 -0.182 0.093 0.139 -0.023 0.085 0.044 (0.011)** (0.020)** (0.137) (0.255) (0.137) (0.255) (0.015)** (0.158) (0.168) (0.097) (0.077) Lagged sales 0.166 0.261 (0.101) (0.118)* German kids × album

FE in 1st stage No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No

MTV × album FE No No Yes Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No Polynomial time trend Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes No Week Fixed Effects? No No No No Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Album Fixed Effects? Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No Specification as in Table (model) 7 (4) 7 (4) 7 (5) 7 (5) 7 (7) 7 (7) 8 (1) 8 (2) 8 (4) 8 (5) 8 (6) Observations 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 10093 8739 8739 8739 8739 R-squared 0.74 0.76 0.85 0.79 0.87 0.79 0.82 0.86 0.87 AB test for AR(1) 0.305 0.201 AB test for AR(2) 0.643 0.531 NOTE. Dependent variables are album sales (1,000s) and scaled downloads at the 1st stage. Downloads are scaled to reflect the growth of KaZaA users over the sample

period. For the fixed-effects models, the reported R-squared is the sum of the explained within-variance and the fraction of the variance that is due to the fixed effects. Album-

weeks prior to the release date are excluded from the sample.

** significant at the 1% level

* significant at the 5% level

TABLE 10 ROBUSTNESS CHECKS

Table 7 (4) Table 7 (6) Table 7 (7) Specification Coefficient downloads (std. error)

Coefficient downloads (std. error)

Coefficient downloads (std. error)

N

-0.010 (0.158)

0.005 (0.062)

0.037(0.065)

10093 Benchmark specifications, models (4), (6) and (7) in Table 7

Changes in Sample

0.064 (0.376)

-0.001 (0.108)

-0.013(0.112)

7399 Without holiday sales

0.018 (0.166)

0.034 (0.071)

0.079(0.075)

7890 Without albums that are not downloaded

0.051 (0.184)

0.083 (0.090)

0.161(0.097)

5033 Albums that sell more than 151,284 copies (50th percentile) during the sample period

0.037 (0.135)

0.062 (0.055)

0.092(0.058)

8567 Without Latin and Country albums

Changes in Model Specification

-0.006 (0.007)

0.001 (0.003)

0.004(0.003)

10093 Dependent variable is log of sales

0.083 (0.029)**

0.019 (0.026)

0.005(0.022)

3232 Sales and downloads are expressed as percentage changes

Does the estimated effect vary by popularity?

Main effect downloads

Interaction H0 sum = 0

(Prob > F)

Downloads (instrumented) are interacted with…

-0.095 (0.185)

0.001 (0.001)

0.6119 10093 Billboard rank of artist’s prior album

-0.130 (0.192)

0.001 (0.001)

0.5015 10093 Best Billboard rank for artist during career

0.002 (0.181)

0.002 (0.007)

0.9822 10093 Number of previous albums

-0.128 (0.175)

0.039 (0.026)

0.5917 10093 Herfindahl index measuring concentration of downloads

NOTE. Dependent variables are album sales (1,000s) and # downloads at the 1st stage. Robust standard errors

are in parentheses. For the popularity results in the lower panel, the specification is model (5) in Table 7.

Album-weeks prior to the release date are excluded from the sample.

* significant at the 5% level

** significant at the 1% level

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TABLE 11 HYPOTHESES TESTS

Class of Models

Lower bound of 95% confidence interval Can reject hypothesis that the impact of file sharing is larger than (in million albums)

All models (Tables 7 through 9) -24.1 Models with German vacation × Album FE interactions -12.7 Models with scaled downloads (Table 9) -12.4 GMM models with scaled downloads (Table 9) -6.6 5 models with smallest standard errors -6.0 NOTE. These values represent the overall, industry-wide impact of file sharing for 2002 as implied by the various

specifications. The lower bound is the minimum of the 95% confidence interval around the mean impact. Details of

this calculation are listed below. The second column of each row reports the median lower bound for that class of

models.

The lower bound is calculated as ∑t∑i (Dit×5.04×1000)×(γ–2×se(γ)) = 240m×(γ–2×se(γ)), where γ is the point

estimate from equation (1). The factor 5.04 scales the results from our sample to all releases and the entire year

2002. It is calculated as: Aggregate impact = (Effect of file sharing on sample sales over observation period) ×

(population sales/sample sales) × (file sharing activity over year/file sharing activity in observation period). From

our sales data, the ratio (population sales/sample sales) is 2.27. The second ratio is (File sharing activity over

year/file sharing activity in observation period) = 2.22, which is calculated from weekly file sharing traffic rates over

the 2002 calendar year on the Internet2 backbone (Internet2 Netflow Statistics 2004) and the monthly average

number of U.S. file sharing users (BigChampagne 2006). Note that the second conversion factor is close to a naïve

correction based simply on time, (52 weeks in year/17 weeks in observation period) = 3.06.

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020

4060

8010

0P

erce

nt o

f Stu

dent

s on

Vac

atio

n

0 5 10 15 20week

German students U.S. students (college)Rheinland-Pfalz Bavaria

Fig. 1. Timing of German and U.S. School Vacations

55

020

040

060

080

0S

ales

('00

0s) a

nd D

ownl

oads

0 5 10 15 20period

sales downloads

Fig. 2. Dynamics of Downloads and Albums Purchases for a Popular Album (by week, sales in thousands)

56